I don't know what love is because nobody does

I have tons of crushes. They are funny and smart and weird and I’m too scared to try and kiss them. I read Mark our texts when they make me laugh, and I watch the shows and read the books they recommend. I can’t tell if they like me as much as I like them, but I don’t feel like I need them to. I mean it would be nice, but it’s not always feasible. If I had to put a number on it, if a crush likes me 4/5ths as much as I like them, I think that’s okay. Maybe ¾ths.

Now that I’m going on dates I don’t know what I’m looking for. Do I want a long term relationship? Do I want something casual? Do I just want friends? I’ve definitely thought about how I treat new people I like aomantically even if I think I might be romantically interested. This is a way for me to feel safe, which is either a bad thing (read: defense mechanism) or it’s an okay thing (read: I have aromantic tendencies and this is how I feel comfortable interacting with people). To me, those relationships from hipster movies which don’t make obvious sense have always felt intuitively real. I don’t know how most people are able to figure out all of these different kinds of ‘liking’ someone. Some people seem to know who they like-like, who they like-as-a-friend, who they love-like – to me it all blurs together into two axis: vague love and vague attraction.

I am vaguely in love with my friends and the way they make music, write, tell jokes and smile, the way they dress, speak, walk and dance, and the way they treat strangers. I’m not sure that’s wholly different than what I want from my crushes except that I also like being vaguely attracted to them. My feelings of vague attraction seem related to physique, the expressions their face makes, the sound of their voice, the smell of their sweaters, what it feels like when they rest their head on my shoulder, the context in which we interact, and whether they seem at least ¾ths into me.

This might be overly simplistic, since vague love and vague attraction influence each other a lot of the time. It might also be really freaking obvious. But I sort of feel like something that straddles that particular line is important enough to think about. Like does this mean that I have crushes on all my friends who I think are vaguely attractive? Can someone even DEAL with having that many crushes at once?? (Hint: no)

I’m not sure how much sense it makes to date if I don’t really even know what I want, but I do know that most people don’t mind just seeing where things go, and aside from my long term goals, it just feels kind of nice to meet people, even if its just on a prove-that-I-can-do-it and try-new-things level.